


Genealogy

by Orianne (morganya)



Category: Whose Line Is It Anyway? RPF
Genre: Gen, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-11-11
Updated: 2004-11-11
Packaged: 2017-11-22 03:35:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/605388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morganya/pseuds/Orianne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Roots are sturdy things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Genealogy

Colin wondered if it was possible to be homesick for a place you never really lived in. He sat by the side of the bed and watched Debra sleep. He could hear humming from the kitchen; his aunt Janet was getting breakfast ready. He'd woken up early and gone down to help her, but she'd chased him out of the kitchen, her spatula a lethal weapon, saying, "Get out, I'm quite capable."

They hadn't gotten a chance to go back to Kilmarnock for a couple of years. The trip had been fairly last-minute; Colin remembered it as getting one phone call from Janet and buying tickets the moment he hung up the phone.

Debra stirred and opened her eyes. She gave him a lazy grin. He grinned back and stroked her palm.

"I'm so glad your family let us stay with them," she said. "It must have taken a lot of scrambling on their part."

"I think they like it," Colin said. "How'd you sleep?"

"Fine." She rubbed her eyes. She'd slept on her hair wrong; it looked lopsided. He pondered telling her, but Debra was always so pulled together, effortlessly classy, that it was strangely endearing to see her rumpled and sleepy.

"Douglas is taking your grandfather today, right?" she asked.

"Yeah. I still think I should go with them."

"What'd Janet say?"

"That it wasn't a good idea."

"She probably knows best. I know you want to help, but..."

"Don't want to confuse him."

"Yeah. Maybe we can come back later this year, when it's not such short notice."

"Yeah."

"I think I'll take Janet shopping today. She needs a break."

"Think she'll let you? She went at me with a spatula earlier this morning."

Debra laughed. "You just need to learn to be more subtle, sweetie. Why'd she..."

"Don't ask."

"Okay. Want to come shopping with us?"

"I think I'll stay here."

"Yeah, hold down the fort. Or just go out, take a walk or something." She pushed herself off the bed and looked at the mirror over the bureau. "Colin, my God. Why didn't you tell me I looked like this?"

"It's very attractive."

"In a Morning of the Living Dead way." She picked a brush off the bureau and whacked at her hair. "God, it's a shame they have to sell this house."

Colin looked around. The room had been where Janet used to sleep before she got married. The room must have been some sort of a sanctuary for her; he had memories of visiting at four and hearing Elvis or Petula Clark floating from behind the closed door. If Janet was in a good mood she'd invite him in and make him sit without moving on the floor while she searched through her piles of records until she found just the right one. "Don't move, you. Touch me stuff and I'll bloody brain ya." When she found the right one she'd sit beside him on the floor and play imaginary guitar strings, singing, and when it was over he'd clap his hands and say, "Again, again." She usually would. He wondered what Janet had done with all her records.

"I guess it had to happen," Colin said.

Debra put the brush down and rested a hand on his shoulder. "How're you doing?"

"Okay. Eh. I don't know."

She rubbed the back of his neck. "Want to talk?"

He shook his head.

"Okay, hon. I'm going to take a shower. Go get breakfast, I'll be down in a second."

The kitchen smelled of grilled tomatoes and bacon. Janet looked up from the stove.

"Ah, you're back again. Here." She passed him a plate, laden with sausage and eggs and fried bread and apples. He put on two kilos just looking at it. "Luke's just gone. Bonnie sent Paul and Ian over; they went to the park."

"Ah." Colin leaned against the kitchen counter and felt relieved that Luke had cousins living nearby; he was getting to the age where just being around adults, and his parents in particular, was mortifyingly embarrassing. "How's Grandad?"

Janet shrugged. There was a crease in between her eyebrows that he hadn't seen before. Funny how much she'd gotten to look like his mother. It shouldn't have been funny, after all, they were sisters. It just didn't coincide with the mental picture he had of her. "He's in the living room."

Colin stuck his fork into the apples. They were hot, dusty with cinnamon. "He's not coming in?"

"No. Because he's being a stubborn old fool," Janet called in the direction of the front room.

"And you're a stubborn young fool." His grandfather's voice was thinner than he remembered it being, but it still had the ring of authority that had scared him so much when he was younger.

"Only you could call me young, Daddy," Janet said. "Come on now and I'll bring you some nice eggs."

"I don't want bloody eggs."

"Well, what do you bloody want, then?"

"For you to leave me be."

"Go without, then," Janet said. She rubbed her eyes. "It's always this way," she said to Colin. "He'll have something in a minute. Best to let him think he's getting his own way."

"Deb's the same way in the morning."

"Um," Janet said distractedly. She looked up at him, already laying out a plate for Debra. "You've gotten so gray, Colin."

"Yeah. And bald."

"Really? I hadn't noticed that."

"Is Douglas coming today?"

"Half an hour. Just finalizing things."

"How does he like it? All right?"

Janet shrugged. "He likes it well enough. As much as he can. There are people there that he knows."

"So he knows that he's going."

"Somedays he does. Other times, not so much." For a moment, something flickered across her face. "If he hadn't run off those bloody caretakers..." She turned abruptly back to the stove. "Are you done?"

Colin looked at his plate. "Yeah."

"Here. Bring him this. He'd like you to." She gave him a plate.

Colin went into the front room. His grandfather sat in the red leather chair that he'd had for as long as Colin could remember.

His grandfather got smaller each time Colin saw him. Colin still had the image of him forty years ago, a giant with dark gray hair and hands like shovels. He remembered going up to the chair and barely grazing the top of his grandfather's knees with his head.

"Grandad?" Colin said.

A slow smile. The missing front incisor always made him seem slightly wolfish. "Colin. You're here."

"Yeah. Last night, remember?"

"Yes, yes, of course I do. Where's the young lad?"

"Gone to the park with Paul and Ian."

"Ah. Good."

"Want this?" Colin gestured to the food.

"Put it over there." His grandfather gestured to the coffee table. Colin set the plate down.

"They're taking me to the home today," his grandfather said.

"Yeah. Are you ready?"

"I suppose I bloody well have to be." His grandfather folded his hands, ropy with blue veins, knotted from arthritis. "You'll be getting something before the house sells. Your brother and sister, too."

"Wow." Colin swallowed down the sudden tightness in his throat. The house had been largely cleared out over the years as people had moved out or gone away, but certain things remained; his grandmother's pots and pans, serving dishes, chest of drawers. "You don't need to do that," he said, cursing himself, but feeling the need to brush it off anyway.

"Don't tell me what I need or don't need to do. I'm not letting some wasters get their hands on your gran's things. Best send them to someone'll treat them proper." His grandfather sat back, smiling, pleased with himself.

"Thank you," Colin said quietly.

"Eh." The door opened; Colin heard Janet greeting Douglas. He wondered if he should go out and say hello.

"Colin," his grandfather said.

"Yeah?"

"Tell Fiona to bring the children next time."

Fiona was his grandmother. His grandmother was dead. Colin said, for lack of anything better, "Okay." He backed out of the room, slowly.

Douglas was talking to Janet in the kitchen. Janet said, "Say hello to your cousin, he came all the way from Canada because I asked him to."

"Good man." Douglas enveloped him in a bone-crushing hug. Colin always thought that Douglas would be more convincing as a wrestler than an estate agent.

"Hey," Colin said when Douglas let go.

"Hey. How's yourself?"

"Okay."

"Is he in there?" Douglas pointed to the front room.

"Yes," Janet said.

"Might as well collect him now."

Colin swallowed. Everything felt too casual. He watched Douglas go into the front room. "You sure I can't tag along?" he said to Janet.

She sighed. She looked exhausted. "It might just confuse him more."

"Oh," Colin said. He swallowed again. He didn't want to see Douglas walking out the door with his grandfather, keeping close, hand hovering in case of a fall. "You need me to do anything?"

"No. Thank you."

"Oh," he repeated. "I might just go out for a while, then. When Deb comes down..."

"I'll tell her."

"Okay. Yeah. Okay." And then he was out, walking out into the still-cool midmorning air. He only stopped once, on the top stair, wondering if he should go back and tell Debra that he was going out, but he didn't want to face the house again, with everything too familiar and too strange all at once. He started walking, hoping she'd understand.

Kilmarnock always stayed the same. Close-set buildings, banks and pubs and churches all side by side; just a small Scottish city. If he kept walking, he'd eventually hit the countryside, purple with heather, the grass' color saturated and brilliant with moisture, maybe even get to what had been Dean Castle, with its broad pinkish brick, blackened at the top. This was what he remembered.

Maybe that wasn't quite true. What he remembered most of all was his grandparents' house. Everything else about the town had come later and just gotten jumbled together.

He remembered his grandparents' house better than he remembered his own, it seemed. He remembered the house where he had lived with his mother and father and, later on, his brother, more as a collection of colors and smells than anything really concrete. If he wanted to be realistic, he would say that the other memories weren't much different, only punctuated with episodes. He supposed it was because he'd left when he was seven.

He couldn't remember when he'd lost his accent, when Canada had softened the burr out of his voice. Back then his accent had just been one more thing that marked him as separate. _I can't understand you. Why do you sound like that? You can't play with us, you talk funny._ He learned, he adapted until he sounded just like everyone else. It was different for his brother, who'd been too little to really know anything else but Montreal and Vancouver, and his sister only knew Scotland as a place to visit.

And then he'd gone back to Kilmarnock with his brother and sister, and his grandfather accusingly asked his mother, "What have you done to the bairns? They can't even talk properly!"

His grandfather had once been terrifying to him; the intimidation still returned, off and on. But then he kept thinking of being - God, how old was he? Five? Six? - alone in the house with him, maybe his mother was around, he didn't know. His grandfather had been stomping about, snarling at the stove, wondering aloud why it was always him who made the tea and that everyone was going to go hungry because he didn't bloody care anymore. Then he stomped into the front room and sat in his chair, glowering.

Colin attempted to fix things, poured loose tea leaves and cold water into a cup and brought it out, grainy water sloshing onto the saucer. He gave it to his grandfather, who stared at it for a minute before laughing. "It's a good try, lad." Colin could still feel his grandfather's large, rough hand patting his head, the gruff voice saying quietly, again and again, "Well done, lad, well done, lad."

Colin swallowed. He had almost made it down to the town center, with its statue of Robert Burns in the middle of the square. Someone had covered it with graffiti a few years ago. He supposed he should head back to the house, start dealing with things like an adult.

_Why do I feel like I'm losing it?_

When he was younger, going back to Kilmarnock had been something to look forward to on the holidays or school vacations, when his parents had the money. When he got older, moved out, got married, had Luke, he'd still looked forward to coming back. It was like touching base with the first stable home he'd ever known. It had taken years before he felt comfortable in a Canadian skin, before he stopped anticipating the next upheaval.

"Everyone puts down roots," he remembered his grandmother saying. "No matter where they are." She'd said it just before they'd left for Montreal. His grandfather had just said something about Colin and his brother 'forgetting where they come from.' His grandmother had shook her head. She'd been standing in the kitchen, stirring something on the stove. Her face was serious, which was why he remembered it so clearly, he guessed; she rarely bothered with being serious. "Don't worry about who they're going to be."

The night before they left, she'd pulled him aside, pressing a copper coin into his palm. "Come back and see your Gran sometimes. And don't be too serious. You've always got to enjoy yourself, Colin. Nobody needs to be too serious all the time."

He was fourteen when she died. They'd gone back for the funeral; his grandfather sat quietly in his chair, staring at the wall, Janet, seven months pregnant with his cousin Tracy, stood in the kitchen with his mother, both of them fixing sandwiches for the assembled throng of aunts and uncles and cousins, also silently. Occasionally someone would say, "We should be laughing; she'd want us to be laughing," and his grandfather would snap, "I'll get out the fuckin' guitar and you can all dance, then!"

That night he'd gone down to the kitchen for a glass of water and found his mother sobbing over the dishes. He would have almost preferred the stiff, cold silence over that; there was something terrifying about seeing his mother this way, face distorted, hunched over the sink. He'd tried to do something, put his arms around her waist, but she didn't seem to notice him. She stood up to her elbows in dirty water, saying, "Mum, Mum," and there wasn't anything he could do to stop it.

The next morning she apologized, said she was fine, just that it was upsetting to lose someone. "But it goes away, Colin. It goes away after a time." She didn't talk to him about it again.

Every year that passed, his memories got more and more shadowy.

_Face it. Go and face it._

He headed back to his grandparents' house, passing car parks and restaurants. He told himself that it was just a town like any other.

Luke was sitting on the front steps when he approached the house. He had a sudden flash of parental panic; his son had been locked out, had been waiting for someone to come back while Colin was wandering around. The front door was open a crack behind Luke, he noticed relievedly. As he got closer he could hear music from inside the house.

He called his son's name and waved. Luke got up from the steps and went to meet him. Colin expected him to say, "Dad, can you maybe, you know, not do that..." but instead Luke hugged him fiercely around the waist, almost-teenage self-consciousness abandoned.

Colin hugged Luke back in surprise. Luke said, "It's going to be okay, right, Dad? We can still come back here, right?"

He stood rooted to the spot, pushing the hair back from his son's forehead with one hand. He thought about the house in Toronto, the renovations finally finished. He thought about Debra, who never asked to go to the Bahamas when they got a vacation, but said, "Oh, let's go back to Scotland." He thought about Luke grown up, taking his wife and his children on vacation, saying, "This is where my father was born."

He thought that Thomas Wolfe had been mistaken. Some part of you never leaves home, no matter where you are.

"Of course," he said. "There's nothing stopping us."


End file.
